AN OLD INDIAN OFFICER ON THE CAUSES OF THE INDIAN REVOLT.

IN defence of all we are doing, or intend to do, to the Indian insurgents-when they are vanquished-it is asserted they had no cause for revolt. Had they not, say those who were in the government employ, their rice and salt assured to them? Yes. But since man has faculties and feelings above those of a hog, rice and salt are but one ingredient in his real or imagined happiness. His bosom, in all climes alike, burns with the pride of national independence, patriotism, and religion. He soon finds, or imagines he finds, that the worst native government is more tolerable than the best foreign rule. For even in the vices of a native despotism there is something in which he can glory, and he is free from the sense of being subject to strangers, and regarded by them as being both mentally and physically inferior, from the very fact of his subjugation. And then a government of conquering strangers cannot-let it even endeavour to do so-rule according to the prejudices, national traditions, and constitutional forms of the vanquished. All other governments, under whatever form or name, are despotisms, and those despotisms touch the mind of the people, not their bodies. But when the conquerors are of another faith, the evils are augmented. They cannot wholly be obliterated by even a change of religion in the vanquished, and although the victors should, as in the instance of the Tartars in China, take the religion and manners of those they have overcome, it cannot, as we there see, fill up the mighty gulf between the two. We however, have done none of these things in India, but have tried, against all the obstacles of climate and immemorial institutions, to turn Hindoos into Englishmen.

But is not our rule incomparably better than any the native rulers of the East ever gave, or were capable of giving? This boast of the superiority of rule is not quite so indisputable as most seem to think. At the time that our conquests were going on, when our armies entered a native-ruled territory, the circumstances that struck the officers with the greatest astonishment were the happy look of the people and the flourishing condition of the lands, as compared with the wretched appearance of both in our possession. Under the rule of Tippoo Sahib, of Mysore, whom we are in the habit of regarding, and with propriety, as the worst of Indian despots, this was peculiarly the case. The explanation of the prosperous condition of the masses and the capricious tyranny of the rulers existing together is this: the cruelties of the Sultan only reached his courtiers and nobles, who were a breakwater on which his rage exhausted itself before it reached the people; but under the routine of a European absolute government, where noble and serf are regarded as the same, all feel its effect. This is the state of our rule in India, and the application of European systems to the East. The government has hitherto been unchecked by the fear of insurrection. It was a common reply to the complaints of the natives, when bewailing the unlimited power of the rulers in the states under our protection, to say, "We cannot defend ourselves from the tax-gatherers by arms, as heretofore. If we do, the Com

pany's soldiers come in, and things are worse than ever. fight against them!"

It is no use to

The tenure of "good behaviour," on which the successful soldiers who directed the affairs of the temporary kingdoms which arose in Hindostan between the fall of the Mogul power and the complete rise of ours, was a most powerful incentive to pay attention to the happiness of the many. Thus, in the case of Hyder Ali, the father of Tippoo Sultan, he punished, with what Englishmen regard as most atrocious cruelty, any oppression by the great, or his ministers, on the lower orders. He perceived that it was by their will that he held not only his throne, but his life. From this he is regarded by both Mahomedans (to whose faith he belonged) and Hindoos as a saint, and is one of the traditional heroes whose justice and equity are sung in the nursery. It may astonish some to learn that Warren Hastings, whose education from early youth in the East had made him more of a Hindoo in principles of government than a European, and who adopted a plan strongly resembling that of Hyder Ali, is commemorated in the same manner! This honour no other of our Indian governors have obtained, except, perhaps, Sir J. Malcolm.

Again, our taxation is exceedingly heavy. The necessity for a large standing army to keep down the conquered is the cause of this, and the tax-payer has no consolation of the acquisition of national glory to lessen the weight of his burden, which is a kind of balm in such cases to a conquering race like ourselves. Nay, every farthing is doubled to him by the thought that he pays it for riveting his chains.

But there is another thing, which, perhaps, more than all the foregoing considerations, may account for this revolt, as it touches a class to whom all the power belonged before our conquest-the exclusion of the natives from all the higher offices, both civil and military: the former, on the foolish notion that the natives are too corrupt to be admitted to them; the latter, on the more rational supposition that, had natives high military commands, we should soon be excluded from them, if not driven from the country. But there need be no fear of this; the natural partiality for our countrymen would always keep them in the majority. The hatred of disappointed ambition in the natives, when excluded, is much more to be feared, as the present juncture shows, than honourable emulation.

In the last renewal of the East India Company's charter, a petition was presented to parliament from the natives of the Bengal Presidency, praying that the competitions might be made as free to them as to Englishmen. Without a debate this request was rejected; and a cabinet minister said things must continue on their former footing. As this, at the time, made no noise in parliament or the press, it has most likely been forgotten by those who then noticed it, and is unknown to the mass, but it has doubtless kept a firm hold of the memory of the Bengalese; and how many may its recollection have urged to wait for and rush into the first attempt to overturn our power, determined that if their ambition could not find a concession of an honourable field for exercise, to seize one by force.

But, so far from any concession of greater employment being given to the Oriental subjects of this empire, it is said that even the little they now enjoy will, when the rising is quelled, be taken from them, and

that they can no more be trusted even in the ranks of the army. But we may be sure that such a course would fail of keeping them in passive obedience even more signally than the one we have hitherto pursued. Of course, if not soldiers in our pay, they could not mutiny against their English officers. But they would take the more dangerous plan of acting as gangs of freebooters, not as the cowardly Thugs, assassinating defenceless travellers, but with the numbers and discipline of armies, lodging in the central hills and jungles, and thence descending at set seasons to ravage the lowland districts, or plunder the convoys of government money. Such were once the Pindarees, and such would become the proud and excluded nobles and military class, if we do, as is now said, for the future, instead of extending the sphere of honourable employment under our government to them, cut off even the little they now enjoy.

This is the only safe course we can follow if we intend to hold our Eastern possessions. It was the course the Mahomedans followed, whose supposed bigotry we are so fond of abusing. Under their sway, Mogul, Persian, and Hindoo were equally employed, on the sole ground of merit. Further, they never tried to enforce their own system of law on the Hindoos, but the court had double judges-one for the Moslem, and the other for Hindoo jurisprudence. It was reserved for the English to subject the followers of Brahma to the laws of the Prophet, and to administer them by means of a European who had never studied their codes till he received his appointment of judge, even if he did then. All the foregoing causes of discontent, of which, probably, the exclusion from important offices is the most active, are sufficient to extinguish the cry "that the Hindoos have rebelled nobody can tell wherefore."

There has, however, been a great outery that the Indian government did not discover the conspiracy, which, it is alleged, had been brooding for some time before this outbreak. This assertion is utterly without foundation. The insurrection is only one of those simultaneous outbursts of dislike with a foreign, or even sometimes a native, rule, of which history is full. The revolt of the Spaniards against the French is an illustration in point. Had there been a conspiracy, we should certainly have had no open revolt. It would have been discovered, and nipped in the bud. It can be asserted as a general rule, applicable to all lands, that where a political movement begins and is carried on by a party of plotters, it is no concern of the nation, but only the matter of a faction. It is not far wrong to say that none of the great insurrections of history were so begun; they have been the explosion of long-brooding discontent, fired by some seemingly accidental and trifling circumstance. Such was the beginning of the Bengal rebellion from the mutiny at Meerut. From the report of our spy, it is certain it was not concocted, as once supposed, by Nana Sahib. This monster only joined it after its completion, and stamped eternal infamy on his name by his too exact imitation of Western revolutionary leaders.

F. F.

THE BRITISH ARMY.

Ir is known, we apprehend, to all classes of the reading community, that a commission-partly composed of civilians and partly of military men-has been sitting upon a much-vexed question, namely, that of "Promotion by Purchase." The report of this committee has been promulgated, and we unhesitatingly declare that the "decision" arrived at is decidedly BAD, and the verdict “non proven.” The Times, with the aid of one of its most active correspondents who formed one of the commission, may give a slight though evanescent turning of the minds of the thoughtful towards its verdict, but we venture to assert that before a few years have passed, this report will be remembered no more. Old club fogies will pooh-pooh it, young Wragenjohanishers will anathematise it, and society laugh at it, as we do now at Bloomers, aërial machines, and the Northern Bee.

It is not even the unanimous report of a commission. Each member of the committee has given his own individual ideas on the evil of the system of Promotion by Purchase, and each produces a little "bantling" for a reform; but amongst all the suggestions for remedying that which the Times styles "our present greatest evil," no practical military man, divested of partiality, favour, or affection, can point out a single grain of common sense amongst all this chaff of crotchets. Each member has taken his seat at the table with a fixed idea in his mind, which no evidence heard can by any human means root out. Each committee-man drew up his report. Each report differed from each other as much as the usages, manners, and customs of the antipodes do to our own!

Fortunately, the ex parte advice so gratuitously offered by this military commission will benefit few except some learned antiquarians, who, while turning over the musty pages of Blue-books, will read and learn the instincts, ideas, and astuteness of the British senators of the nineteenth century.

Civilians utterly ignorant of the wheel that works within wheel in so huge and complicated a piece of machinery as the British army, naïvely propose as a remedy to lay the axe to the root of the most essential ingredient-mark, the most essential ingredient-in the whole formation of a regiment-esprit de corps.

Many an old campaigner of the Peninsula or Waterloo, who turns over these pages in his cozy arm-chair in the reading-room of his club, will assuredly attest to the incontrovertible truth of the essential ingredient of esprit de corps in every regiment in the service. Each regiment has its individual merit in the eye of the gallant aspirant for glory. Son followed father in the same path, wore the same coloured coat, or waved on high the same old "rag," with the same old number that had carried so often death, fear, and destruction into the enemy's ranks, and such honour and reward into their own! Fathers had served with fathers, rich with poor, sons with sons, officers with privates. "The ould so-and-so bees my regiment-dad served in that!" says the clodhopper, as a recruiting sergeant of another regiment tries to lure him

with the shilling. Again, certain corps have popularity in certain districts. The Highland Brigade is dear to Scotchmen, the 18th and 88th to Roman Catholic, and the 27th to Protestant Irishmen, the 11th Hussars are most sought after by Londoners, the Scots Greys, of course, by Scotchmen, the 4th Dragoon Guards by the "boys of Cork," the 3rd Dragoon Guards by Yorkshiremen, the Queen's Bays by Ayrshiremen, the 17th Lancers by the brave lads of Dublin, and the gallant Inniskilleners by the men of Erin's north. If here we digress a little, it will be only to return to our subject immediately, and impress upon the reader the paramount importance of attention to these points in recruiting. If our authorities do not fail in so doing, we apprehend no "cry" will be raised of a lack of good matériel. But if we send a Scotchman to raise recruits in Tipperary, and "Paddy from Cork" to Aberdeen, "arrah," do not let us be surprised at our want of success in filling the ranks of our army, but at the simplest rudiments of common sense of our authorities.

Esprit de corps is the first principle to be instilled into every soldier; without it your army becomes a mere herd of mercenaries. Do you think the famous charge of Balaklava will ever be forgot by the regiments who so gallantly rode to death and destruction when bid? No, as recruit enlists, old soldier will tell, and as cornet joins, captain will relate, the imperishable deeds of valour the "ould" 8th or dashing 17th performed on that ever-memorable occasion. Will the deeds of the gallant Brigadier Scarlett, too, perish, as writing in the sand? Who, that "has served" remembers not, when the Crimean war broke out, and the 5th Dragoon Guards were far under their strength, how Colonel Scarlett (since Major-General) asked the reserve corps for volunteers, and how a hundred brave spirits stepped to the front and, with a loud cheer, joined the good old chief of the "Green horse ?"

Look to the Indian butcheries, where black demons in the forms of Sepoy soldiers have committed unparalleled enormities, yet amongst all their crimes and cruelties we now and then discover a bright speck where esprit de corps has shone forth, and one or two have been faithful amongst the faithless. The chief cause of the Indian mutiny has been want of esprit de corps.

The commission advises Promotion by Purchase to extend to the rank of major-happily it does, otherwise the country must be prepared to be saddled with five or six millions extra national debt-after which rank competitive examinations are to ensue, and a colonel is never to sell his commission! You say to a gentleman, "Sir, you must enter my service and serve your country well. You must buy up all your promotion; you must spill a certain amount of your bill; leave an arm, say; in the Crimea, and a leg at Delhi; you must suffer cholera, and ague, and fever: you must do all this for no wages, for your pay is only bare remuneration for your investments, and if you are a cavalry colonel you must give fourteen thousand pounds for your command. All this, my dear sir, boots nothing; you have walked into the trap, you are as safe as the mouse is-we won't let you out! Ha! ha ha! We will sequester your money. Hurrah! We have you. Are you not ours? You may have led a forlorn hope, you may have frozen in Canada, or frizzled in India, or perspired on the barren rock of Gib, or coughed in the